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Molly asked me about the photographic lighting and posing books I've been looking at. I'm not sure "recommend" would be the term I'd use for my posing book -- if anybody has one they love, I'd be delighted to hear about it -- but I am enthralled by the two lighting books I've been reading.
for posing, I use Master Posing Guide for Portrait Photographers.
It's unabashedly sexist. I was able to mentally strip off genders and think, "so these are techniques to make the subject look more powerful...those make the subject look more gentle and submissive..." etc. After I stifled the urge to *throw* the book.
The lighting-book situation is more, well, sunny.
Matters of Light & Depth is rocking my world right now. It takes a creative approach to lighting. When I finish a section, I have a gestalt of mood with a general idea of how to think about achieving it, rather than a laundry list of techniques. This is good and bad -- it means more on-site experimentation to figure out if what-I-think-will-do-what-I-want is actually what the book is talking about, but I think in the long run it's teaching me how to think about light in good and important ways.
The other book I've got that I like is Light-Science & Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting which, as you can probably tell from the title, is more textbooky. It's a more "technical" text, or at least a less abstract one. It's very approachable & has great diagrams. I think if this is the only book I had, I'd ulitmately learn lighting solutions that are highly accurate and not necessarily too creative...so I'm very glad I've got both books.
Posted by sev @ 11:06 AM PST |